September 2022 eNews

Upcoming Events & Announcements

2022 International Numismatic Congress

Twelve members of the ANS staff will travel to Warsaw from September 11-16 for the 2022 International Numismatic Congress, where, along with many members of the Society, they will host more than 20 presentations. In support of the numismatic community, the ANS helped offset the travel expenses for a contingency of ANS members in order to attend the Congress, and is financially assisting a couple of numismatic projects by Ukrainian scholars. More.

The Planchet: Season 3, Episode 4

Richard Abdy is a curator at the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum, working on their collection of Roman coins. In this episode of The Planchet, Abdy speaks about his numismatic path to the British Museum from his days as a Glasgow schoolboy, explains the 1996 Treasure Act, expands the idea of numismatics as a living history, and recounts how he was held captive at lunch and decided to undertake a 10-year journey into the Roman Imperial coinage of the emperor Hadrian. More.

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September Long Tables

Lecturer at University of Arizona and ANS Summer Seminar Graduate Dr. Nathaniel Katz will discuss Imperial Legionary Coins and Civil Wars in ancient Rome; ANS Fellow Scott Miller will present on the Robert Fulton Medal; and, as our fiscal year comes to an end, Deputy Collections Manager John Thomassen will review the last year of acquisitions to the ANS Collection.

August in Review

Repatriating a Pawnee Peace Medal

Early this year, ANS staff conducted a thorough review of Native American objects in the collection and rediscovered an 1862 Abraham Lincoln Peace Medal, which had been removed from a Pawnee Burial site in Genoa, Nebraska in 1912 and acquired by the ANS in 1915. As per the terms set by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), the ANS reached out to the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma about a voluntary repatriation. On August 18, 2022, the ANS welcomed Martha Only A Chief, a delegate of the Pawnee of Nation of Oklahoma who traveled to New York to take custody of the medal, and her sister, Anita Whiteshirt, who accompanied her on the journey. During remarks celebrating the emotional occasion, Deputy Director Nathan T. Elkins recognized the work of ANS staff who made the repatriation possible, and especially David Yoon (Mark Salton Associate Curator of Medieval, Renaissance and Early European Numismatics), who made superlative contributions to the provenance research on this piece. Dr. Elkins continued: “Although he wanted to be here, our Executive Director, Gilles Bransbourg, could not be with us today, but I know he shares with me this sentiment: We here at the American Numismatic Society are honored to have been stewards of this object for 107 years, and we are very pleased to see this medal taken from a Pawnee leader’s resting place returned to the care of his people.” In her remarks, Ms. Only A Chief relayed how much this repatriation means to Pawnee Nation, and the deep connection she felt with the history of her kinsmen and the chief who had been buried with it as she held the medal. Her sister also shared a moving testimony about the emotional resonance of the repatriation and reflections on the efforts of Ms. Only A Chief in protecting the cultural patrimony of the Pawnee Nation.

2022 ANA World’s Fair of Money

This year, the ANS was a Palladium Sponsor at the American Numismatic Association’s World’s Fair of Money. From August 16-20, Executive Director Dr. Gilles Bransbourg and Curator Dr. Jesse Kraft represented the Society during these much-anticipated activities, including the ANA’s Annual Banquet. In addition, Dr. Bransbourg delivered a lecture to the Chicago Coin Club, “Inflation and Coinage in the Late Roman Empire.”

(Photo: Commercial Director of the Royal Spanish Mint José Miguel Fernández de Liencres, Dr. Gilles Bransbourg, Director of the US Mint Ventris Gibson, and ANA President Dr. Ralph Ross)

A Record Number of NLG Awards for 2022

The Numismatic Literary Guild honored the ANS with a record eight awards at the recent ANA’s 2022 World’s Fair of Money. Numismatic Commemorations of the 200th Birthday of George Washington in 1932 by Former ANS President Sydney Martin (1945-2021) won Best Book on Tokens & Medals; “Coins and the Colosseum: How Coinage Illuminates the Greatest Amphitheater” in the ANS Magazine by Deputy Director Dr. Nathan T. Elkins won Best Feature Article on Ancient and Medieval Coins; and Pocket Change won for Best Blog, among other research and media outputs of the ANS. Read about all eight of this year’s NLG wins.

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Dr. Wartenberg Researching in Turkey

ANS President Dr. Ute Wartenberg, together with her husband ANS Trustee Jonathan Kagan, went to Southwestern Turkey to examine excavations at the ancient Lycia site of Patara. At the invitation of Dr. Erkan Dündar, who is part of a Turkish team excavating this important site, they studied over 30 Archaic and Classical coins found in the last few years. Their study will be part of a publication of other finds from this site, which is in preparation by the Turkish team and their various collaborators. More.

Dr. Kraft Represents the ANS at ICOMON General Conference

The 26th ICOM International Committee for Money and Banking Museums (ICOMON) General Conference was held in Prague from August 20– 28. ANS Curator Dr. Jesse Kraft represented the Society and delivered the paper Learning to Use Money: Comparing and Contrasting the 18th/19th Centuries to the Present Era.

Negative Muons Reveal the Economic Chaos of Rome’s AD 68/9 Civil Wars

Dr. George Green—Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow and Lavery-Shuffrey Early Career Fellow in Roman Art and Archaeology at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford—studied the applications of negative muons to the cultural heritage sector. His research was published on August 6, and is now available open access. In his May Money Talks, Dr. Green discussed this technology and what his team has learned about Roman gold coinage produced during the “Year of the Four Emperors.” 

August Long Tables

This August, Dr. Lucia Carbone delivered the second part of a presentation on female portraits on Roman coinage; Dr. Waleed Ziad—Assistant Professor and Ali Jerrahi Fellow in Persian Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—presented research on the native votive coinages produced in the Sakra region of northwestern Pakistan; Dr. Ronald Bude, Professor Emeritus of the University of Michigan, discussed how micro-computed tomography, electron microscopy, and X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy is used in the evaluation of ancient coins; and the final Long Table of the summer was hosted by Christopher McDowell, ANS Fellow and Editor of the Journal of Early American Numismatics, on the story of enslaved people and freedmen as told through Revolutionary War Era fiscal paper. Watch recorded Long Table lectures on the ANS YouTube Channel.

(Photo: Waleed Ziad)